


Tapestries

by magicianlogician12



Series: Fortune and its Favor [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicianlogician12/pseuds/magicianlogician12
Summary: Marivale's never been much for tying herself to people, but it turns out she was just waiting for the right one.





	Tapestries

Marivale has taken care never to let the invisible threads of emotion tether her to anyone, over the years.

Some threads are useful, on a temporary basis, and she cultivates those relationships to her liking, weaving them into the image she needs to achieve her ends. Cutting them at the end is always a businesslike affair, for her–less so for the people whose threads she borrowed for her ends.

Not that it matters much in the grand scheme of things, of course. This whole galaxy is a place where powerful people stomp on the less powerful, and Marivale’s only goal, really, was to be one of them doing the stomping. Anyone stupid enough to believe her careful ministrations with the tethers of their emotions was sincere deserves what’s coming to them. Sentimentality doesn’t keep her alive, has never been a factor in her plans.

Even her own threads began to fray, though, loathe as she was to admit it. Cut enough of her own threads, professional or no, and there comes even a point where she cannot knot them back into some semblance of being functional. Can’t tie herself up to anyone with threads that don’t stay put, that no one else wants to put in the effort to tie back up with their own.

She loses her contacts, first, distant ones on the Outer Rim, and they slowly go dark, one by one. She doesn’t have _friends_ , not really, and never has, but the few people she enjoyed having fun with up until that point disappeared too, like smoke.

Marivale would never admit the fact, and never talked about it, but the crew of Paxton Rall, stubborn as they were in reaching out with their own frayed, knotted threads, saved her skin in more ways than the obvious. They didn’t try to lace pretty gold threads of aimless flattery with their rough-hewn wisecracks, and she found that she _fit_ , with their mix-matched, utterly chaotic web of emotional thread.

Oh sure, they were in it for the money, and the thrills–what pirate wasn’t? But they didn’t let their greed or their hot-blooded love for the sound of a blaster cartridge discharging overwhelm the threads, invisible and strong as spider silk, that kept them bound together.

Taking a knife to those metaphorical threads–not to mention half the crew’s wealth–left the remnants of Marivale’s threads, whatever remained of her ability to attach herself to people, tattered and ripped beyond repair.

Being truly alone is something she’s done her best to avoid, and with good reason. Even those she manipulated for her own ends were company in some way.

Maybe it’s fitting that path brought her to Ord Mantell, eventually, less a ship and a purpose, or an ability to acquire either one, for that matter.

She’d called it a stroke of bad luck when Paxton Rall himself had come sauntering up to her, with her bloodied lip and sunburnt nose and her dignity as frayed as her heartstrings, but Marivale, for all her skill as a liar, had never been able to lie to herself. Not for long, anyway.

It was business, and those threads, while still torn and not suitable for long-term tethering with anyone else, were functional enough for the job at hand. The phantom pain from the memories left behind by the threads Marivale had severed with all the ferocity of a lightsaber strike refused to abate, ghostly remnants of the weaving, winding paths they might’ve taken together if she’d been different. If everything had been different.

Months down the line, with her purpose–and fortune–secure, Marivale had thought to cut the threads binding herself and the twi’lek pirate captain forever, but, at the last minute, left them be. They’d fall apart on their own, with no input from her, eventually. No point rushing the inevitable.

The inevitable never came.

No, instead Marivale had to contend with the fact that for once, the unraveled ends of those thin and powerful threads, that she’d once been able to cut at a moment’s notice, held steady.

And grew _stronger_.

“What’ll you wager, Coryth?” Paxton’s grin at her across the sabacc table is one of a predator, but Marivale knows she’s the better cheat.

She picks up her Corellian rum and swishes it around, listening to the sound of ice against the glass. “Half your crew’s fortune.”

He laughs, and Marivale smirks, and thinks about the fact they’ve gotten to the point where they can easily joke about her pulling the rug out from under his crew, years ago now. “A bold wager; let’s see if your ability measures up to it.”

It always does. Three hours in and Paxton’s discarded his helmet, where it lays on the floor while he stares fiercely at his sabacc hand with the intensity of a man willing a fire to start. “Losing won’t get any easier by delaying the inevitable.” Marivale tells him, saccharine smugness dripping from her words.

Paxton groans and flings his hand of cards down on the table. “Absolutely _remorseless_ , you are. Couldn’t even give me a pity victory.”

“Of course not.” Marivale leans back in her seat, boots up on the table. “You’ll never learn to cheat right if I go easy on you.”

“A toast, then,” Paxton bows from where he sits across from her, picking up his own half-empty glass, with a grin that took Marivale a long time to recognize as sincere, “to the victor.”

She holds her glass up, and hesitates, and Paxton waits with her, cocking a brow at her in questioning.

Marivale looks at the invisible strings that bind them, her frazzled and messy and over-knotted heartstrings that used to struggle keeping the veritable network she relied on close at hand, now firm and resolute.

She inspects those strings, and ties her first unbreakable knot, tightly and without reservation. Confidence has always been one of her best allies.

“And a toast,” Marivale adds, holding her glass aloft, “to the future.”


End file.
